Second week in the MTC

Hello everyone!


The day has finally come when I am not in the group of the newest missionaries!  We get to say "Bienvenidos"(welcome) or "Buena Suerte"(good luck) to all of the noobs who have an orange dork dot (as we call it) on their nametag.  This week has been one of the hardest weeks of my life along with one of the most learningful weeks of my life.  At this point I have taught cinco lecciones(5 lesssons) to an investigator.  He is now our teacher and goes by the name of Hermano(brother) Brown.  Starting lunes(monday) of next week we will have two or more investigators at a time...so me and my companion definitely need to find ways on how to prepare lessons faster.  One of the things that I have found out from this past week is that if you don't have the spirit with you in the MTC, you can't ever get much done.  In the second to last lesson with our investigator I very much was blessed with the gift of tongues and I was able to understand and communicate back with him the whole time!  Spanish is coming along just swell!  The new teacher, who was the investigator, kept pointing me out in class yesterday saying that I was a good spanish speaker and if my district has any questions they should talk to me...I'm not sure how I feel about that.  My district consists of 5 companionships: Elder Larisch and Elder Squires, Elder Wilson(DL) and Elder Harker, Elder Phenix and Elder Rose, Elder Wright and Elder Terris, and a threesome of Hermanas Collette, Ball, and Hafen.  They are all pretty cool people.  I will maybe send some pics home and give you a visualization on how things are goin here!  Today we had the opportunity to go to the Provo Temple!  Any time that we get to get some fresh air is quite the opportunity.  We always go out to the field for gym time.  Even more than getting some fresh air, we also get the blessings of the temple!


This week I was officially made senior companion.  Which doesn't really mean too much, it just means that I tell Elder Squires what to do and he has to obey my commands.  Whenever I want an ice cream, he gets me an ice cream.  Ha ha.  Just kidding, it doesnt really work that way, although it would be nice. 


Every Tuesday night in the MTC we have a special General Authority devotional.  Usually it is just people in the 70 that no one knows.  A few weeks ago it was Elder Holland(I very much so wish that I could have been there for that one!).  This week we had the awesome opportunity to hear from Elder M. Russell Ballard of the 12!!!  What great words of wisdom he had to talk to us about.  He had a lot of uplifting words to say about us as missionaries and the great purpose we have in inviting the world to come unto Christ.


The last few days I have had a progressive cold that is really annoying!  It started with a sore throat, the next day it was just a really bad runny nose, then yesterday it was more of a headache, now it is a cough...and a runny nose...No Bueno! 


I don't have much time left today to write more in the email because I got distracted from another Elder earlier.  But if you wanna talk to me you should just write me a letter or somethin!  or send me cookies, brownies, or anything sweet... ha ha.  Missionaries love packages!!


Missionary Message of the Week:


The missionary purpose is to INVITE others to come unto Christ by HELPING them receive the restored gospel through faith in Jesus Christ and his Atonement, repentance, baptism, the gift of the holy ghost, and enduring to the end.
The reason why I capitalized the words 'invite' and 'helping' is because those are the two verbs/actions we as missionaries must do to bring the world his truth.  The investigator of the church must find out for themselves if the church is true or not through the testification of the Holy Ghost to their heart!  I am thankful for the eternal blessing of the gospel in my life! 


Con Amor,


Elder Larisch


The Church is true!

First letter home...

Dear Family!


I am learning so much in the MTC! The first day was very hard for me though. After getting all of my books and stuff, I was sent to my classroom where my teacher spoke just about nothing but spanish... That was the time where I decided that I probably should have studied much more spanish before I even thought about coming here. After being confused for what seemed like a very long amount of time in my spanish classroom, Elder Squires walked in. Elder Squires turned out to be my official MTC companion. He is from American Fork, he loves ping pong, his birthday is August 4th, and loves this Gospel. I'm not sure if I could ask for a better companion. We have taught each other so much about the gospel and about learning the language in the few days we have known each other. It seems like I have known him for a year!


Yesterday, we started teaching our first lesson to our progressive investigator. Oh yeah, did I mention that it was in Spanish??? The progressive investigator is a teacher from the MTC that acts like a person investigating the church. His name is Benito Juarez and he used to live in California, but he moved to Provo to follow his novia(girlfriend), who is going to BYU. He has heard some things about the church from his girlfriend but he still needs to be taught many truths. His dad and mom are both catholic and presbyterian respectively so he knows about religion, he is just confused. In our lesson yesterday, Elder Squires and I taught him about the restoration and Jose Smith. We commited him to pray and ask if Jose Smith es un profeta verdadera(true prophet)...at least I hope we did. We had to improvise a lot because we did not have time to finish our lesson. Elder Squires read a lot off of the paper that we prepared to help us and didn't leave me much to read so I relied on the don de lenguas(gift of tongues) to help me say and ask the things of Benito that el Espirtu Santo(the Holy Ghost) and I felt necessary. We are to teach him tonight... I need to practice my spanish a lot more if I am going to say the things I need to say to Benito.


The food here at the MTC is asombroso(awesome)! I'm not the biggest fan of the chocolate milk...well it's just okay to me, just tastes the same as at home...but what I do get at every meal is about 4 glasses of pure apple juice! Que delicioso! Coming into the MTC, I did not know that there was going to be such a seleccion de comida(food). If you want to get something healthy like a salad, you can. If you want to get a doughnut...well you can do that too! I need to control myself though or else I will not be able to fit in my pants...


I encourage all of you young men or young women who read this that are contemplating on serving mission to pray about it! And keep praying about it until you receive a strong feeling from the spirit. Make sure that you pray with sincerity from the corazon(heart). The MTC is an experience that will change your life as it already has mine! It is so crazy the amount of change I have already seen in myself as I have listened to the spirit and had a good attitude. I know that spanish will eventually come to me--hopefully sooner than I think.


Well, I only have a couple minutes left to write so...I would like to share one of my favorite scriptures if not my favorite scripture. Matthew 4:19-20 says something along the lines of this:"And he said unto them, "Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men." And they straightway left their nets and did follow him."(I don't have my scriptures with me right now so it is not exactly a direct quote... but I love that scripture especcially right now because of me being a missionary. Grandpa Fletcher, even though we didn't get our fishing trip in before the mission. I want to let you know that I am preparing for the biggest fishing trip of my life!


Thank you for all the examples! Im out of time in ten seconds!


Con amor, Elder Larisch

Final good-byes and he is OFF...

making sure they made the weight limit

giving one last squeeze to Maggie

Deven got them each an Argentina flag to remenber him by

army of Helaman lined up to greet us





Dev was quite surprised that his dad could lift him up

first thumbs up

and then another thumbs up--even the host gave me one!! I knew then that he will be OK!!

One sad car ride home :-(

Wow, what a day is all I can say!!  The day started out great with all you can eat french toast at Kneaders (a favorite place of Devs) and then home to finish packing.  His arrival time for the mtc was 12:55 p.m.  We left the house around 11:30 and headed to Provo...and ended up at the Provo Temple grounds.  We all got out and took a few pictures and walked around.  There were soo many missionaries there doing the same thing as us, and it helped me to know that they were having the same feelings as we were.  Well, it came time to say our goodbyes and give our last hugs and then some more tears showed up :(  It was hard for me to know what to say because the emotions were so strong, yet I was soo excited for him and this new chapter in his life!! Then we were off to the mtc which is just across the street.  We pulled in and saw all the missionaries in their white shirts--what a sight that was to see--and the minute Dev opened the door they were right there asking him where he was from and where he is going to be serving.  They took his luggage and we gave him a hug and he was off!!  And at that moment I felt half of my heart leave and I knew it wouldn't come back for 2 years!!

First Baptism

Deven had the opportunity to baptize before his mission.  His cute cousin Micah chose Deven to baptize him.  Deven said that was soo cool and he felt very blessed that Micah chose him to do that!  What a neat day that was for me and Deven!! Thanks Micah!!

Farewell..till we meet again

Deven gave an awesome farewell talk today--His topic was following Jesus Christ through word and deed.  He even bore his testimony in spanish, which really surprised me that he knew that much spanish.  He is so ready and very prepared to go out and preach about Christ.  He had a lot of support there with family and friends.  We held an open house after and @200 people showed up!!

I love to see the temple...

Deven got to go through the Draper Temple and take out his endowments today! It was such a wonderful day. He had many family members there to support him. He can't wait to go back and learn more. We are so proud of him and his decision to serve the Lord. What a great example you are to your sisters!!

mission call???

Dear Elder Larisch:

You are hereby called to serve as a missionary of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. You are assigned to labor in the Argentina Mendoza Mission. You will serve for a period of 24 months.
We wish you the best..go forth and serve!!